Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I've compiled some basic information about the top SSF2T players in Japan. The seed for this list came from the Hyper/ST Player thread(s) on 2ch.net. Discussion there revolves around the question of, "who is the best ____ player?" Players are given scores that represent their mastery of a certain character. While these scores are rather arbitrary -- and simply the opinions of anonymous nerds on a thread -- there is a pretty solid consensus as far as who the top players are.

Here's a sample list that someone posted a couple months ago. Let me stress again that these numbers are just one anonymous person's opinion: I think he may have been factoring in the Neo Star Cup results heavily -- note the high marks for Shiki Guile and Aniken Boxer. Names in bold are players I'll list in detail presently.

Roughly speaking, Kansai refers to the area around Osaka and Kanto is Tokyo and vicinity. "More," "UFO," etc. are names of arcades that these folks often play at. More, BTW, raised their price from 50 yen to 100 yen for a while and some of the hot players jumped ship to Mikado. Nagase UFO's SSF2T is still 20 yen (!), I think. UPDATE: There's an arcade called Hey in Akihabara that has a 10 yen ST machine that some of the Kanto players occasionally visit.

The Win-Loss numbers include tournament matches from X-Mania 6 (December 30th, 2005) through Shinjuku Mikado 3on3 (December 17th, 2006.) I did include HSF (SF2AE) events as well as matches involving sub-characters (IE: Noguchi Claw, Gian Ryu, etc.) "Top players" here refers to other players on the list.I'm afraid I don't have detailed information for some of the team events including Club Sega 5on5 and X-Mania VII. Toutanki would have gotten a big W/L boost from the latter, in particular.UPDATE 3.30.07 -- Added additional X-Mania 7 matches to the numbers.

Some of the text is adapted from a series of cheesycute mini-bios on an old 2ch thread. I also gleaned some information from interviews on the Daigo fan page.

The winningest Ryu player in the game, D plays the textbook Ryu. His sense of spacing and his ability to chew up "big four" (Sim, Chun, Claw, Boxer) players is unmatched. It's a good thing D is around; to tell the tale of Street Fighter 2, we need a strong protagonist.

Umehara + Shoryuken = Umeshoryu. With one of the finest psychic DPs in the game, Daigo got his name on the technique itself. The Umeshoryu actually gained fame during his SFA3 days, but he busts it out plenty when he plays SSF2T. How does he do it? Is it fast reflexes? Anticipation? Simply the power of THE BEAST? You decide.

Aniken used to be known as the player with the "mix-up of god." While it ought to work 50% of the time, Aniken somehow employed the knee bash/Dragon Punch mix-up with 80% efficiency. Recently Aniken has cut back on his use of the mix-up of god, yet he still wins with incredible consistency.One more thing about Aniken: rumor has it, he once rescued a girl who had fallen on some train tracks by using a real world top-spin kick* to get to her in time. (* - down, down-back, back, up-towards+kick)

If Aniken is the "Ken of the West," then Mattsun is the "Ken of the East." Mattsun's game is dramatically different, however, as it features a lot more risk taking and odd-ball tricks. His spicy Ken style makes for some of the most entertaining ST matches out there.

As the strongest player in recent history, Otochun is the king of Super Turbo. Among other things that make his Chun-Li game so fierce, is some slick use of the vertical jump roundhouse. Crack reflexes and high priority give him an iron wall of defense.Otochun is also a gentleman and he's always gracious in post-victory interviews.